In this interview, the Director, Pax Herbal Clinic and
Research Laboratories of the Catholic Monastery,
Rev, Fr. Anselm Adodo,
explains the relationship between orthodox and herbal medicine and how cancer
can be cured through herbal treatment.
What is the Catholic Monastery all about?
A monastery is a place set apart from the active world where
people have time to reflect and pray. This is a Catholic Monastery. So a
Catholic Monastery is a place where a group of Catholic monks live, to make
time for prayers, study, meditate and reflect. There are different monasteries:
Buddies Monastery, Hindu Monastery, even Muslim Monastery.
Apart from the meditations and studies, what else do monks
do?
Monks do different activities to help themselves, to feed
themselves because Saint Benedict said that monks should feed by the works of
their hands and they should also be models of hard work; and even though they
are set apart, he emphasised that their reflection should bear fruit in
activities and labour.
Like each monastery adapts to the environment, the work they
do is conditioned by the environment they live in. For example, here in Ewu
monastery, we have farm, poultry, we do a lot of agriculture, we study, and we
teach; we give people spiritual reflection, people also come for retreat.
In addition to the things we do, twelve years ago, we
started a herbal centre; normally every monastery has a herbal garden, but, in
Ewu, it happened that we went further to develop a health centre, we developed
healthcare in a traditional way, it is a way of promoting the culture to show
that there is something worthwhile in it.
For some time now, there has been agitation over licence to
herbal producers because of dosage problem. Do you have licence for the drugs you
produce?
Actually the history of herbal medicine is the same history
of medicine generally; it is rather unfortunate that we are now demarcating.
Medicine is actually one and it has the same function, that is, to provide
remedy to sicknesses and diseases. Traditionally, people have their own ways of
giving dosage.
It is a method. So the complain about dosage is actually
more from those who have not sat down to study the background and culture in
which herbal medicine has grown. The idea of dosage in orthodox medicine is not
the same as it is in traditional medicine because when you are dealing with
synthetic chemicals, you have to be precise. If you want 10ml, you have to take
10ml because that’s what your body needs to carry out the right healing process
because those chemicals can be very dangerous in the body system.
It is a different story when somebody is eating pawpaw and
you say ‘take one slice’ and the person takes three slices; it will not do any harm to the person or you
tell somebody to take one cup of orange juice and he decides to take three
because these are natural fruits meant
for the body.
So the idea of dosage is made by those who think they are
more knowledgeable and they are not patient enough to listen to what
subscription is. I think it is arrogance and pride that brought this
conclusion, otherwise western medicine is derived from traditional medicine.
What are the treatments people receive here?
We run a general practice where people come with different
complaints; malaria, typhoid, circulatory problems. We analyse each case and
then prescribe medication, we have developed over 12 to 13 years and there are
different stages of this medication.
We are actually running a comprehensive system, we have a
clinical centre like the health centre; we have the research department where
we have micro-biology laboratory, chemistry laboratory, coordination laboratory
and specialists in those areas, we even have pharmacists. So our process goes
through different stages before you finally have the finished product which we
now prescribe and monitor the reaction and how the body responds to the
treatment.
For those who need to be referred to other areas for further
investigations, we also do that. This is a clinic, a clinic is where people
come to make complaints and the physician decides what step to take and we keep
a record of all our patients.
We don’t go about announcing what we have cured, we just
make sure all our cases are documented and allow external bodies, if and when
they are ready, to come and see the documents. That is why we don’t advertise
or go about making claims, we help those who come here and leave it to them to
tell whoever they want to tell.
Apart from malaria that you mentioned, what else do you
cure?
We treat typhoid, malaria; we have specialists here in
infertility, cancer, HIV, infections, tuberculosis, gonorrhoea, syphilis.
Do you have cases of breast cancer here?
Yes, and it is alarming. It is an epidemic; it is a
situation that government should handle with a lot of seriousness and declare
an emergency because the rate at which it is occurring is very high. It appears
common but the fact is that there is more incidence of breast cancer in the
past five years.
We were told in the past that everyone will die of one
cancer or the other; the older you get, the more likely you would get cancer;
but now you see people in their 20s and 30s who have cancer. It is no more a
disease of old age, it is becoming a disease of people from all walks of life;
I believe something is wrong somewhere and we have to look into it seriously.
In your own analysis, what do you think is the cause?
It has been said on many occasions even by World Health
Organisation, that there is a link between diet and cancer. Let’s look at it
the way it was done in the case of smoking and lung cancer so that we will be
able to pinpoint which particular diet and substance in the food that we eat,
in the colouring we add into our food, in the cream we rub on our skin, is
there a particular substance that can be identified as causing a particular
kind of cancer?
I assure you this can be done if there is sincerity on the
part of the government and those carrying out researches. Cancer is caused by
diet, lifestyle but the challenge for us is to link a particular cancer
directly to a particular food or life style or stress.
We know that stress is one of the major problems in the
modern day life and we know that if the immune system is weak, the body is
prone to a lot of diseases. So could it be stress? Can we carry out a study of those who sleep
three to four hours, and eight hours and see what kind of sickness they suffer
from?
I suppose researchers don’t do much on this but I am
encouraging that these are the things we need to do in our various centres.
Those who put herbal and traditional medicine out of the picture are wrong
because here we say western medicine must work closely with the traditional
healers in order to make a way forward. Health issues are multiplying, the
system in place is too foreign; it doesn’t really suit the mindset and the
culture we live in; so we need a new thinking.
This is what we have been promoting and we have also been
doing a lot of research, we are not just complaining but we have made a
concrete proposal about health policy in Africa and Nigeria. Cancer requires a
lot of attention; for now, I believe the increase in fast foods in the cities
and remote villages is not helping us.
Do you think cancer should be treated with herbal than with
western medicine?
Yes, looking at the history of medicines; most of the
medicines that were discovered like penicillin, it was from observation of some
fungi growing on plates. So it was actually nature that provided penicillin and
has been one of the most revolutionary drugs that medicine has ever discovered.
The same thing with many of the other substances like
insulin for diabetes, they didn’t come from
observations in the laboratory
from mixing chemicals, they actually came from studying and looking at nature.
Although medicine can claim to be the originator and claim the credit for that,
the reality is that it is nature that provided these medicines and I believe
that medicine has gone astray from its original purpose.
We are now focusing more on machines and experts who will
operate these machines and carry out one test or the other; let’s stop
deceiving ourselves, there is need to come back to the roots; because that is
where our problems are located and it is also where the solution is located.
In the last 30 years, there has not been any major drug
discovery; they are only recycling the same drugs. From Chloroquine to
Capquine, we are recycling the same substance, so I believe we need to go back
to nature, to its root in order to find remedy to cancer and hypertension.
We know that medicine works but we should also remember that
we pay a big price for the cure that you get for medicine. You may take a drug
for ulcer, it may cure you but then the drug that cures the ulcer elevates your
blood pressure, so you start taking hypertension drugs and truly it lowers your
blood pressure, but the side effect is that you now have diabetes; then you
start taking drugs for diabetes.
As you control diabetes, you have another problem; maybe it
has affected your kidney and the circle goes around. So what is the purpose? I
have seen a drug for asthma where the drug indicated that the side effect is
sudden death and sudden stroke, don’t you think it is better you keep the
asthma and survive than to treat the asthma and have sudden death? So you can
imagine such a drug prescribed by doctors, it shows how we think and it’s also
tells us that something is wrong somewhere.
This issue of doctors recommending the cutting of breast as
cure for cancer, is there no other solution?
In medicine, it is officially stated that there is no cure
for cancer; so the cutting of the breast is to prolong the life a little bit.
We are working with Howard University Hospital in America where we do a lot of
research on cancer. They told me they have made a lot of progress in the last
10 years and the progress is that they have been able to prolong a cancer
patient by six months.
To them that’s a lot of achievement. I told them in Africa
that is nothing, what is six months?
Cutting of the breast I suppose works in 1-3 percent cases and most
cancer anyway has already spread beyond the supposed affected areas.
So cutting of the breast is not the solution. There are few
lucky cases where it has not spread, you may cut off the breast and it may
work. Even in those cases because they are not sure, they still have to carry
out chemo and there is also evidence which is very clear scientifically that
chemo has 1-2 percent success rate and about 80 percent dangerous side effect
which is well documented. I suppose, out of frustration, physicians have to do
something because the mentality of bio-medicine is that doctors are meant to do
something; whatever it is, just do it. It is a wrong attitude to health care
and it causes more damage.
That is why I believe medicine is not just science. Medicine
is actually culture; most of the medical practice is culture. The scientific
part is the one that belongs to pathology, biology, but that will make up 20
percent, the remaining 80 percent is culture, so many people are alive based on
how many surgeries they have done in life. African people value their bodies
and I have seen a lot of women that were told that they would die in four
months if their breasts are not removed, and all they told the doctor
was, ‘No problem, let me stay the way I came’.
Nigerian medical practice is being tempted to operate
outside the culture of Nigeria. Already, there is gap between the people and
hospital ideas, people are seeing hospital in a negative sense now because it
is like a foreign thing which came from outside and is not considering the
culture.
As a medical sociology, this is the area that we have been
very much keen about, when you see a doctor who tells his patient with breast
cancer that her breast should be cut off. It is unfair to use such language, A
doctor should be able to call his patient aside and get his or her view when it
comes to matters like taking off some part of someone’s body? Because it is
assumed that the physician and the patients are colleagues, they need to
discuss.
So if a doctor calls a patient and says ‘we have to cut your
breast’, that manner of approach is against our culture because it is against
our view of the body and the medical system has to look into that. But we are
not doing all that, we are just imitating what is practiced in other cultures.
American medicine is modified according to their culture and
genuine medical practice in Africa must continue to consider the culture, we
must use the right language and the right attitude for people to change their
ways of life.
At the moment, there is too much monopoly of health care by
medical practitioners, a medical doctor should engage himself with treating the
patient not into administration and controlling how money is spent; that is one of the reforms and
practices we need.
(Vanguard)
No comments:
Post a Comment